School locked in dispute with Apple over Siri app invention

By Larry Rulison

Published 6:07 pm, Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute must make a former graduate student now teaching in Thailand available for testimony in its patent dispute with Apple Inc. over the Siri voice recognition app used on the iPhone.

RPI claims that the technology behind Siri was invented in 2001 by one of its professors, Cheng Hsu, and one of his former students, Veera Boonjing, who is now a professor in Thailand.

RPI holds a 2007 patent that it says covers the Siri technology, and since 2012 it has been locked in litigation with Apple in U.S. District Court in Albany over the use of the technology.

Apple, which has denied any wrongdoing, has been trying to force RPI to produce Boonjing for a deposition in the case.

So far, RPI has resisted the move. But on Monday, a magistrate judge in Syracuse ruled that Boonjing must be made available, although he left it up to the two sides to figure out how to accomplish that.

Apple says that Boonjing's testimony is key because the first draft of his doctoral thesis at RPI essentially lays out the invention.